


Not a Saint; Not a Sinner

by nyargles



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyargles/pseuds/nyargles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They’re family.”</p><p>“So?” says Draco impatiently. “They locked you in a cupboard for ten years.”</p><p>“I’m pretty sure you tried to do that at some point too,” points out Harry, clapping his hand over Draco’s which is still around his arm, which means that he’s just dragging Draco towards the Dursleys with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Saint; Not a Sinner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Noremac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noremac/gifts).



> This was a charity commission for [Kala](http://orestes-swimming.tumblr.com/), who requested 'a fic in which Draco meets the Dursleys and has some choice words for them'. This is about 75% not what was asked for, so I apologise in advance.

Every time Harry goes to Platform 9 and 3/4, he always feels as though he should get on the train with all the other students. He wonders if the other adults feel the same way, a familiar wave of nostalgia tied so intimately with a specific time and place. He spots familiar faces in the crowd, people he sees every day at work or people he promises to keep in touch with and never does.

There’s a veritable clan of Weasleys now; Rose is the first of Ron and Hermione’s to go this year, and she is armed to the teeth with good advice (from Victoire), bad advice (from Roxanne), and a good array of basic offensive spells (from Ginny). Despite that, she’s rocking apprehensively on the balls of her feet between Ron and Hermione as all the cousins she was relying on to show her the way abandon to say hello to their own friends.

“Hi Uncle Harry!” Teddy slides into view. A chorus of hellos ricochet between them as Teddy wades in into the fray.

He saves Draco for last; Draco, who is standing slightly apart from the motley crew of gingers. “Hey, Draco.” Teddy’s hair turns white blond as he grins cheekily.

Draco scowls at him. “Edward.”

Teddy makes a face – a literal one, morphing his features so that they resemble Draco’s.

“My hairline is not that bad,” mutters Draco, crossing his arms until Harry leans into him, rubbing his back and stifling his laughter. Teddy sticks his tongue out, letting it fade back into the bright blue he currently favours.

“Are you here to see us off?” asks Rose, beaming up at Teddy.

“Sure pumpkin,” says Teddy, and gives her a bone-crushing hug, even as Louis mutters, “He’s here to see _Victoire_ off.”

From somewhere behind them, Harry hears: “Dad, that boy’s hair _changed colour_!”

Harry has no idea who just said that, but there’s a familiar edge of it that hits him like a Quaffle to the face and he swirls around, searching the crowd for – for – “Dudley?”

It’s not Dudley, but it sounds like him, like he did when they were kids. Harry had hated that voice.

A family of three stand uncertainly near the back of the platform, taking in the chaos of crying parents and crying children, shrieking owls and cats being chased by their owners, students on brooms and friendly duels breaking out. Harry hasn’t really seen Dudley in years. He’d checked in on them after the war, of course – they are family after all. He’d been invited to Dudley’s wedding too, and had gone even though Draco had said he shouldn’t, had lurked around for long enough to give awkward congratulations, but even that had been over a decade ago.

Dudley isn’t quite as fat as he used to be, instead looking a bit like someone’s stuck a candle underneath him and melted him gently until he started sagging. Harry remembers meeting the woman next to him, but they must be here for the small boy stood in front of them, staring at Teddy with wide eyes.

“Dudley?” asks Draco. “Your cousin?”

From around Ron, Hermione sticks her head out at them, and raises her eyebrows. Harry waves her back; she’s got Rose to worry about right now.

“Yeah, he’s here. With his kid, I guess,” says Harry. “Who’d have thought he’d have a magical child? Come on.”

“What are you doing?”

“Going to talk to them,” says Harry, making his way towards them with Draco half a step behind him as they weave around luggage and owl cages and families.

Draco grabs his arm. “You don’t have to.”

“They’re family.”

“So?” says Draco impatiently. “They locked you in a cupboard for ten years.”

“I’m pretty sure you tried to do that at some point too,” points out Harry, clapping his hand over Draco’s which is still around his arm, which means that he’s just dragging Draco towards the Dursleys with him.

“Harry,” protests Draco. “Harry. Stop that. _Potter_.”

“This is the closest thing you’re getting to meeting the family,” says Harry dryly. “Consider it revenge for every time we go to your parents.” Which, in all fairness, is not very often. Narcissa acts like a woman who knows she is deeply in debt to him and is studiously ignoring the shame of it; Lucius does that thing where he only talks to Harry through Draco as if Harry isn’t there.

Dudley sees them before they’re close enough to exchange greetings, which means that they awkwardly nod at each other until Harry skirts around two snogging students to stand in front of them. Harry goes for casual. “Hey Dudley. Never thought I’d see you here.”

“Harry.” Dudley shuffles his feet. “Dear, this is my cousin, Harry. The… one I told you about.”

Dudley’s wife is the opposite of him, sturdy but poised and with a face that’s hard to read. “I remember. You came to the wedding. Charlene.” She holds out a hand and he shakes it. Her eyes travel to Draco’s hand, which is still tucked around Harry’s arm. She falters for a moment.

"We're here with Ernie," says Dudley. "We got the letter from the owl a couple of months ago."

"How did Uncle Vernon react?" asks Harry, trying not to laugh at the idea of his uncle trying to stuff 300 letters into an open fire again.

"I thought he was going to choke to death," says Dudley, a grin splitting across his face for a moment before he manages to wipe it off, forgetting for a short moment that perhaps it might not be such a funny memory for Harry. True, Uncle Vernon's temper usually spelt bad news for Harry, but it's funny, now, in retrospect.

"His face did that purple blotchy thing, didn't it?"

Dudley nods, when they're interrupted.

"Dad told me about you," says the kid, Ernest. He's stout, with Dudley's large frame and his mother's sharp features. "He said you were magic as well."

"Yeah," says Harry. "I am."

"Did you know I was magical too?"

Harry refrains from saying that he didn't know Dudley had had a child at all – it’s not like he actually keeps up with them. "No. Sometimes it just appears to children with two completely non-magical parents. My friend over there, Hermione? Neither of her parents have magic either."

"So I'm not weird then," says Ernest.

"Well I didn't say that," says Harry, lopsidedly grinning. "I don't know, you might be weird."

There's a really long pause. It occurs belatedly to Harry that he doesn't really have the rapport with this child like he does the Weasley children, and it might not have been the most appropriate thing to say.

"Well done, Potter, exceptional. You have outdone yourself," says Draco eventually, his familiar drawl breaking the silence. "Kid, as you may have noticed, your Uncle Harry here is bollocks at humour. Don't believe a word he says. Especially if he starts trying to tell you how he saved the world."

"Draco," groans Harry.

"I thought he did," says Dudley in confusion. "Save the world. Your world, that is. The headmistress said so."

"McGonagall? You spoke to her?" asks Harry.

Dudley blinks. "When we got the letter about Ernest. Someone came and explained it all to us. Which is more than what happened when that giant bloke came for you, I might add," he says, slightly defensively.

"She was very thorough," says Charlene. "I did say to Dudley when he told me you were a wizard too, that we might write and ask a few questions."

Harry doesn't recall receiving any correspondence from Dudley -- he doesn't get much muggle post at all, so he definitely would have noticed something like that, and their house is too magical to deal with email. "I don't think I got a letter," he says. "Draco, did you see it?" Draco has a habit of throwing out post he thinks will upset Harry without telling him, which usually ends up with Harry opening the bin to chuck away a banana peel or something and three partially shredded Howlers will explode in the middle of their kitchen, garbling something about the latest Daily Prophet piece on him.

"I didn't send one in the end," says Dudley. "I didn't know if -- well. You know."

"If you were welcome to speak to him after locking him in a cupboard for ten years?" asks Draco acidly. He's not going to let that go, apparently.

"Draco," mutters Harry.

"No, Harry, come on. I told you earlier. Just because he's family doesn't mean you have to talk to him. And if you want to talk to him, you don't have to pretend to be nice."

"I’m not pretending," says Harry, a token protest he knows because Draco's gearing up for a proper speech now.

"Didn't know if you were welcome after you'd spent sixteen years bullying him?" asks Draco as Dudley pales, and shrinks in on himself. His wife draws their son closer to her, and steps away from them.

"Starving him?" continues Draco, in a low voice. "Taking his wand and broom away when he was at home?" He glowers at Dudley as Harry tries to pull him away.

"Putting bars across his window?" chips in a new voice behind them.

"Putting – what the actual fuck, putting bars across his window? Really? Thanks, Weasley," says Draco, acknowledging Ron's contribution before turning back to Dudley. "Were you somehow not sure of what he'd say if you asked for his help after doing all that?" He stops, breathing heavily with the effort of keeping their dirty laundry in this small corner of the platform, tucked by the building.

"Stop helping him, Ron," says Harry firmly. "Draco, stop. It wasn't that bad."

"It wasn't _that_ –!" Draco bits his tongue as his voice rises.

"Sorry," says Dudley suddenly. Everyone turns to look at him. He shrugs awkwardly. "I was a kid then. Grew up fast after you left though." He does squint vaguely at Ron though. “Didn’t you blow up our living room wall one year?”

“Oh yeah,” says Ron brightly. “I forgot about that.”

“I beg your pardon?” asks Charlene, the tips of her fingers going white as she digs them into Ernest’s shoulders. Ernest, on his part, looks fascinated. “You… _blew up_ the living room?”

“Yeah, we got stuck in the fireplace, didn’t we, because we didn’t know muggles blocked them up. Me and my brothers and my dad. Had to blow it up to get out of the wall.” He points over to the good dozen or so Weasleys milling around in the middle of the platform still.

“Oh,” says Charlene faintly.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Harry, steering them towards calmer seas. “They fixed it as soon as they were free. Listen. Dudley and I weren’t close as kids, I’m sure you know, but it wasn’t his fault, not really. He was pretty cool to me later on.” After Harry had almost got Dudley’s soul sucked out by Demontors, sure, but it was perhaps not the best time to be mentioning that. “And I know what it’s like to come into this world and know absolutely nothing about it and feel like you’re always trying to catch up, so ask me if you want to know anything. Hermione, too.”

“Pleasure,” says Hermione, turning around with a look that tells Harry that she’s not best pleased either, but she has at least enough sense to deal with it later, in private. Still, Hermione knows more than anyone about judging people for themselves and not by their parents, and so she turns to Earnest. “It’s Rose’s first year at Hogwarts too. I’ll bet she can teach you a couple of basic spells.” And with that, Ernest has been successfully distracted.

“Thank you,” says Charlene, with visible relief.

“Any time,” says Hermione. “As Harry says, both my parents are muggles, so it’s not uncommon. And we’ve started putting together workshops and educational materials for parents such as yourself at the Ministry. It’s taken a while to sort out, but I can let you know when we’ve got some on.”

Charlene nods, gets out her mobile.

“Er,” says Harry, who did actually get one a few years back for work purposes but doesn’t actually use it personally. “I don’t actually text. Or email. Or IM.”

“I’ve only got a landline. For my parents,” says Hermione apologetically.

Charlene stares at them like they’ve sprouted a second head each. Which Harry has personally experienced when he was trying to break a curse at work, and it was fucking confusing what with the quadruple vision and all.

“It’s just – muggle technology doesn’t work very well in areas with a lot of magical items. It messes with the signal, and Draco grew up with all the magical conveniences, so I don’t get phone or wifi signal at home. I’ve been meaning to renovate with integrated models that work with muggle and magical tech, but we just haven’t got around to it yet. You can send me an owl?”

“Is that the normal thing?” asks Charlene, worry creasing as she sends glances at Ernest. “Dudley didn’t like the owls, he said, so we didn’t get one for Ernie…” She gestures at the carrier basket by Ernie’s luggage, where a grey cat stares grumpily out at them.

“The school’s got postage owls for students who don’t have one,” says Harry reassuringly.

Perhaps Harry had thought he’d defused the situation when he’d moved the focus onto the kids, and their first day at school. He certainly hadn’t wanted to drag up the past in front of Dudley’s kid – he deserves a fresh start at Hogwarts as much as anyone. But apparently that’s not the case, because when he turns around to look back at Draco, he’s leaning into Dudley, his wand clenched in his fist. Ron’s standing next to him, his arms crossed as he occasionally chimes in, and it must be really bad if Ron and Draco are working together.

“Oh, bugger,” says Harry.

Charlene’s eyes follow Harry’s line of sight. “Draco,” she says after a moment. “He’s your…”

“Partner,” says Harry, though the word has never really sat right in his mouth. There isn’t really a singular word that describe his relationship with Draco and manages to encompass everything that they’ve been to each other.

Draco, when asked, normally says something along the lines of ‘How can you describe Harry Potter? He’s _Harry Potter_. What a fucking prick.’ Hermione favours the use of ‘other half’. Ron usually just groans, and says ‘Mate. They’re shagging, okay? Like fucking rabbits, it’s embarrassing actually.’

“Oh,” says Charlene. “That’s nice.” Which is a very middle-class thing to say, Harry supposes.

“We were worst enemies in school,” Harry adds as they start back towards the fray. They’re still too far away to hear what Draco’s saying, but Harry would bet that it’s a long list of the all curses he knows.

“I – what?” asks Charlene.

Harry nods. “He cheered when I fell 100 feet during a sports game. Also, he convinced half the school that I was a mass murderer when we were 12.”

Charlene grows paler. “Were you?”

Harry looks at her incredulously. “I was _twelve_!”

“Ah. Sorry, I got carried away for a moment,” she says. Harry thinks vaguely that she might be good for his cousin. Made of sterner stuff.

“But yeah, Draco doesn’t really have room to preach. He was _gutted_ when I didn’t get eaten by a dragon one year.”

“This is at school?”

“At Hogwarts, yeah.”

Charlene looks like she’s about to faint. There’s a beat of silence, then: “Well. It’s not exactly Wellesley, is it?”

It takes Harry a moment, then he laughs. “I – don’t worry. It’s not as dangerous as I make it sound. We – the magical world – we were going through a rough few years. Dudley might have mentioned it. It’s perfectly safe now.” He hasn’t paid too much attention to the muggle education system, but he remembers all the posh private schools at Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were considering for Dudley. Wellesley’s a prep school, from what Harry remembers, famous for having a lot of boarders from military families. That would explain Charlene’s quiet ability to deal with the unusual.

“Draco, Ron, stop it.” Harry steps forward, sliding an arm around Draco’s waist. Draco stutters to a stop mid-sentence to glance down at Harry’s hand. They don’t engage in a lot of public displays of affection, Harry because it makes Draco uncomfortable, and Draco because he still struggles with the concept of feelings and expressing them in public. “The train’s going to go soon, let them say bye to Ernie and get his luggage on, and we’ve got to say bye to our lot.”

Ron points at Dudley. “If you do anything, you know I’m gonna call you on the fellytone and give you a piece of my mind, right?” He lopes back to Hermione to squash Rose into a hug.

Dudley looks vaguely terrified already, not least because he probably still remembers Ron’s last attempt at the ‘fellytone’.

“I’ll see you later, Dudley,” says Harry firmly. “I’m sure you’ve got questions. Let me know when you’re free and you can come over for dinner –” He glances over at Draco quickly, “Or we can go to the pub or something.”

Dudley nods gratefully as Harry steers Draco away. “You should have let me turn him into something,” mutters Draco.

“Like a ferret?” Harry asks pointedly, and Draco scowls.

“Whose side are you on anyway?” says Draco, but Harry can feel the tension bleeding out of his shoulders as he slumps into Harry’s side for a moment, just a moment, before pulling himself together. Harry says bye to Rose, to Louis and Fred, to Molly and Lucy. The rest of them have run off already to claim compartments with their friends, old enough to know that the term is going to go by in a flash before they return to their families. Draco stands awkwardly behind him – he’s never felt entirely at ease with the Weasleys, though Harry makes an effort to include him, as does Hermione, and Ginny when she’s not playing away games, and, surprisingly, Percy.

Harry reaches his hand out behind him, and feels Draco’s slim fingers intertwine with his own, feels Draco’s solid chest against his back as he misses Rose already. “You’re too nice. Too forgiving,” says Draco in a low voice as steam starts pouring out of the front of the Hogwarts Express. Students stick their heads out of the windows and wave madly, and Harry waves back.

“We were kids. He didn’t know any better. My uncle, and aunt – they taught him that way. And they did it because they were scared. Scared angry adults who didn’t know what to do.”

He feels rather than sees Draco shake his head beside him. “He knew, Harry. Somewhere inside of him, he knew it was wrong to do those things, and it was wrong to find them funny. And he did them anyway, because it made him feel better about himself.”

Harry rubs his thumb over the back of Draco’s hand. “Are we still talking about Dudley?”

Draco pulls away; Harry turns, and can see the denial written all over Draco’s face. The Hogwarts Express pulls out of sight. “Who else are we talking about? He treated you like a house elf, Harry.”

"You _had_ a house elf," points out Harry, "One you didn't treat very well."

“And Weasley told me the full story about locking you in your room with the bars and everything.”

“Draco,” says Harry. “Draco, you tried to actually kill me at least once a year. I cannot think of a more pot, meet kettle situation. He's a product of his parents. Same as you." He raises his eyebrows and Draco flushes a deep pink. They don't bring it up often, the history between them, mostly because ten years is long enough that they've gone over it all, multiple times, and Harry knows it still chafes at Draco's conscience, the one he's been trying to nurture for the last decade, because forgiveness and compassion doesn't come easily to Draco, not even for himself.

The parents are filtering out now the train’s gone, disApparating away in ones and twos. Harry waves at the rest of the Weasleys; he’ll see most of them for family dinner on Saturday, and he’s sure Hermione’s going to pop round in her lunch break tomorrow to talk this over with him anyway.

“It’s different,” says Draco quietly, determinedly. “I try – every day – to make up for it. You know I do.”

“I know,” says Harry, because he does, and because he wouldn’t be in this relationship with Draco if he didn’t. “I know, and if I can forgive you, then I can forgive him too, can’t I?”

And that’s the bit Draco doesn’t understand, not really. “How could you ever forgive me?” Resignation seems through into his tone, and Harry pulls Draco close to him. No one’s left on the platform now, no one to see or comment, not that Harry gives a flying fuck if they do. He curls his fingers around Draco's jawbone and leans in until their lips press together, Draco reluctant at first, then fisting his hands into the front of Harry's robes.

“I guess that’s why they call me your better half.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://www.defractum.tumblr.com)!


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